


Between the Words

by mia6363



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Origin Story, Platonic Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 17:15:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2076384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mia6363/pseuds/mia6363
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Groot made a remark, one that anyone else would have thought was, “I am Groot,” but Rocket knew better. He heard the real sentiment: It feels good out here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between the Words

Rocket was picked up for some bogus “disturbing the peace” charge and they still threw him into a maximum-security prison. So what if he’d taken a few arms off of the officers who came after him? They tried to pick him up like he was a puppy.

He hated being picked up.

When he was shoved out onto the main floor, itchy uniform clinging to his fur, he saw eyes drift to him—to the _animal-vermin-rodent-beast_ that was unnatural. Rocket bristled.

“Stop fucking staring at me or I’ll rip your eyes out!”

The chatter abruptly stopped and eyes were averted. Soon, Rocket heard… what sounded like _snoring_ push through the silence. He searched for the sound, and saw—what looked like a tree. A tree that had a head that was resting against the far wall.

Rocket stomped up to the thing, kicking it in the shin until big black eyes opened.

“Hey, asshole, wake up so you can meet the new boss around here.” The tree breathed, but it creaked, like branches would creak in the wind. Rocket narrowed his eyes. “What the hell are you?”

That was when it _stood up_ , and Rocket realized he’d made a grave mistake as the tree grew until it was over seven feet tall. It made a low rumble in its throat, and for the first time in Rocket’s short and strange life, he realized he’d bitten off more than he could chew. The tree bent down, and Rocket swallowed down the squeak that had been growing in his throat.

“I… am… Groot.”

Rocket thought he was going to get stomped on. Instead, Groot smiled at him with a friendly hum and reached out to scratch behind Rocket’s ears. Rocket slapped the wooden hands away and Groot flinched, a reproachful look on his face.

Rocket shouldn’t have been surprised. His life was weird enough already.

::::

Looking back, Rocket couldn’t say why he brought Groot along with him. He wasn’t exactly inconspicuous and it soon became apparent that he could only say “I am Groot,” and while space was lonely, Rocket didn’t need a broken record filling up the silence. That, and he really made a dent in Rocket’s street cred. It was hard to look tough when he had a loving tree handing out flowers to anyone who looked like they were having a bad day.

But the guy was _strong_. Like really, really strong. And tall, so Rocket could climb up onto his shoulder and see as far as he needed.

Rocket peered into the glass of the warehouse, on the tips of his toes as Groot held him up. The bounty was ample, thirty-five units if caught alive. Apparently the pasty glob of a being was a head of a sex trafficking ring. The only troubling part was the eight enormous bodyguards he had on him. Without Groot, Rocket might have moved along to another bounty.

“All right, bring me down.” Groot lowered his arm, and Rocket jumped onto his shoulder. “There are eight big lugs in there. I can handle a few with my weapons, but the rest—”

“I am _Groot_.”

Rocket smirked.

“I hope that means you got ‘em, big guy. All right. Let’s do this. Remember, pale little chub stays alive. The rest don’t matter.”

They’d done a few bounties together before. Groot was pretty good with directions, sometimes he got the details a little fuzzy and he wasn’t the best at figuring out genders—but he did a good job. Rocket didn’t mind keeping him around.

On Rocket’s signal, Groot kicked in the doors and the fun got started. Rocket was firing away and Groot’s branches shot out and slammed against two lackeys. Rocket got shoot holes through three. The pale chub blubbered directions to his remaining goons.

Rocket was reloading when it felt like a spaceship crashed into his temple. He wasn’t sure what sound left his mouth, but the world went upside down and he rolled along the concrete. He looked up, to see the one of the remaining tough guys grinning down at him, his massive fist speckled with Rocket’s blood—

A bone-splintering roar thundered through the warehouse and even Rocket’s blood went cold. He sat up in time to see a branch impale through the goon’s stomach before winding around, no doubt searching for another addition to its roster. Rocket absent-mindedly touched his temple, feeling the blood as he watched Groot grip the guard to shreds.

Somewhere, the pale chub was crying.

Rocket had just started to get to his feet when the remaining guard, in an adrenalin-fueled panic—ripped one of Groot’s arms off before ripping a whole through the tree’s center. Groot let out a warble, like a wounded animal before collapsing—and Rocket saw red as he shot the guard—and kept shooting until he was nothing more than a smear across the floor.

Rocket stalked over to the blubbering pale chub and hauled him up only so he could punch him down. He kept hitting and hitting him, until all seven of the pale chub’s eyes were bruised shut—and Rocket honestly would have kept going until his bounty was gone and dead on the floor.

What would have surely been Rocket’s finishing blow was stopped by gentle wooden fingers.

“I am Groot…”

Rocket flinched, turning back to see—Groot. Whole, with both arms. Completely fine. The arm that had been ripped off was laying on the floor and Groot smiled at him.

Rocket picked up Groot’s dead arm and hit him hard across the face.

“You asshole! You—regenerating invincible _asshole!_ ”

Groot hummed, bashful, and Rocket seethed before throwing the arm down. They picked up the bruised chub and hauled him to their ship. Rocket was so wound up, scratching his ears so hard that they started to bleed.

Groot captured his hands and rubbed the top of his head. Petting him. Rocket sighed… and let it happen for a few moments before swatting Groot away.

::::

Being bounty hunters wasn’t always fun. There weren’t a lot of friends to be made but plenty of enemies, which his how Rocket and Groot found themselves being chased across the galaxy in a damaged ship.

“All right, we’re gonna make it.” Groot hummed, eyes concerned and concentrated at the window—watching for their pursuers. Rocket started to shift into the landing gears, hoping the ship would hold together long enough. “All right Groot, brace yourself, buddy!”

It was rough, and Rocket was going to have bruises and Groot wouldn’t stop trying to check to see if Rocket was all right—but they made it. They were alive, the atmosphere was breathable, and they were _alive_.

Rocket swallowed. The planet was lush and green. Groot looked right at home as he stretched his bark across the grass.

“It’s gonna be a few days before I can get this hunk of trash off the ground again.”

Groot hummed. Groot was patient, while Rocket was already chewing his lip thinking of how he could cut down on that time.

That night they slept outside. Rocket would have wanted to stay in the ship and not a possibly hostile planet. But Groot made a remark, one that anyone else would have thought was, “I am Groot,” but Rocket knew better. He heard the real sentiment: _It feels good out here._

So Rocket settled in Groot’s branches. Groot hummed, making the sound of wind whispering through leaves. Rocket yawned.

“The things I do for you, buddy.”

Groot brought Rocket in closer, to his chest where he didn’t have a heartbeat but still breathed evenly. Groot’s fingers settled in Rocket’s fur, petting him. Rocket had stopped protesting years ago.

He slept soundly. Before Groot, Rocket loathed sleep because it meant another chance to be plagued with nightmarish memories. But lately they were receding, replaced with a gentle calm Rocket had never known.

…

Rocket jolted awake to see a sea of purple faces staring at him.

“Whoa, what the fu—?”

Groot steadied him with a hum, and smiled at the natives benevolently. Rocket wasn’t pressing back against Groot, he wasn’t because that would be ridiculous. But Groot’s bark wasn’t sharp the way it would be when he was threatened.

A girl with silver hair giggled.

“You were right, Groot, he is feisty.”

“Feisty?” Rocket snarled. “Look, sweetheart, I’ll show you feisty, come here—”

“I am Groot.”

Ugh, Rocket _hated_ people apologizing on his behalf, _especially_ when he wasn’t sorry. He opened his mouth, but the girl spoke again.

“It’s quite all right. It’s not often we get visitors.”

Rocket’s jaws snapped shut.

“Wait—you can understand him?”

It had taken just under a year for Rocket to get Groot’s hidden meanings, and if this girl could handle that in under a few hours—

“We’re a telepathic race.” She grinned and her hair sparkled in the daylight. “We should have the materials you need to fix your ship. In the meantime, why not stay in our village?”

Rocket wanted to decline, but he knew he’d lose that argument once Groot sprouted a flower in his palm to give to her.

::::

It only took them two days to repair the ship and the natives (the girl’s name was Fura) hadn’t killed them. Yet, Rocket reminded himself. Trust was hard thing to come by, and Rocket didn’t just hand it out to anybody. Groot didn’t know any better, no matter how many times Rocket tried to tell him that a good portion of the universe were full of jerks—Groot only ever saw the goodness in people.

Rocket kept getting more and more wound up, and he put the finishing touches on the ship and stalked out to find Groot.

He was in the village, conversing with Fura and some of her friends. Rocket stopped, watching the effortless communication. Fura laughed—Groot had told a joke and she laughed right on time when it sometimes took Rocket a few minutes to understand the punch line.

But here, Groot didn’t have to be patient. He had sun, he had soil, and he had friends—

He had a home.

It hit hard—it harder than any shot to the chest ever would.

Groot made a sound that, until now, he’d only made around Rocket when he was laughing—when he was delighted and here he was, not even a week on a new planet with Fura and he was giddy.

As if on cue, Fura whirled around in his direction, an aghast expression on her face. Rocket tensed, because she was a telepath, and he didn’t like the idea of a stranger poking through his mind.

“Stop lookin’ at me like that and get outta my head!” Groot turned, a low sound of distress rippling through his frame and Rocket felt trapped even though he was out in the open, he needed to run but he felt frozen as Fura walked up to him, her hands raised and spread out in a placating gesture. It made him furious, it made him terrified. “Wipe that fucking look off your face!”

“Rocket, your cause of distress is misplaced, you have nothing to worry about, Groot is—”

She stopped—and that’s when Rocket knew it was over. Because Groot was happy here and Rocket…

“Fuck you.” Rocket’s paw shook as he pointed at Groot. “I don’t need you. I can find plenty of big idiots to follow me around.” Every word tasted like poison but he couldn’t stop, it was like a dam collapsing under pressure and Rocket could barely see, his vision burning and blurry. “Stay here with your new family, I don’t give a shit! I was fine before you and I’ll be fine after!”

He ran. He ran even as Fura shouted that he was a liar, that she of all people would know that.

Fuck him. Fuck her.

Rocket took off in the ship that he fixed.

Fuck everything.

::::

Space was silent… and silence was lonely. Rocket tried to drown it out in crowded bars and booze, but it didn’t work. He couldn’t sleep. No matter how much he tried to drink himself into unconsciousness all he could do was sweat and toss and turn.

It was a hellish three days and when he zoomed back to that planet full of telepaths he wasn’t exactly in a sober state of mind. His landing was sloppy and he probably damaged one of the landing wheels.

He fell out of the door, his center of gravity spinning. He bobbed and weaved through the grass, and started yelling at trees because statistically, one of them was probably Groot.

Rocket fell because he was drunk and drunk people had a tendency of falling on their faces. He hiccupped, and that was when he heard a familiar, soft sound. He looked up and sure enough, Groot was there. His eyes were guarded and it just made Rocket hate himself more.

Fura stood behind him, but Rocket didn’t care. He stood up, as steadily as he could manage, and tilted his chin up.

“Come on, your vacation is over, let’s get back to work.” Groot didn’t move, and Rocket swallowed. “Okay… I’m an asshole all right? Just… let’s go back. To how we were… I don’t…”

_I don’t want to be alone anymore._

He couldn’t say it, he knew he needed to, that it was the very least Groot deserved, but the words died on his tongue.

Groot must have heard it, because Rocket was being lifted into the air, and squeezed—hugged. For the first time in his life… Rocket was getting a hug. And he hugged as much as he could back, his arms barely fitting around Groot’s neck but he gave it his all.

The air suddenly smelled sweet, and Rocket opened his weary eyes.

Flowers and sprung up all over Groot’s body and were in full bloom. Groot spoke, low and the familiar phrase. And Rocket didn’t need Fura to tell him he said, “I missed you.”

::::

Xandar was a pretentious planet. Rocket didn’t like it much, but if there was money to be made he’d put up with it. Groot was drinking at the fountain and Rocket could barely watch it was so embarrassing.

That was when they found Peter Quill.

And Rocket is thinking about everything they’ve been through—all of it swirling into a painful, buzzing mess inside of his head. And he screams at Groot, calls him an idiot, wants him to stop as he shields the rest of them from certain death. It’s the last thing he says to him before they’re on the ground surrounded by broken, brittle branches. Before Rocket risks his life and saves the galaxy because he just didn’t care anymore.

::::

“You look ridiculous.”

Groot turns in his pot, giving him a hurt look as a group called Jackson 5 sang through the speakers on the Milano. Rocket scratched one of his ears, grabbing a pink, flowery watering pot. Groot preened, and as the water fell over him, he said the only phrase he could.

Rocket put the watering can down with a smile.

Later, Peter was able to take two pictures of Groot and Rocket dancing and celebrating life and good fortune. He escaped with a couple of scratches, but it was worth the blackmail material.

**Author's Note:**

> Yay my first foray into Groot and Rocket's beautiful friendship. I know this is canon to the comic, but I love meaningful glimpses into friendships. So please let me know if this worked for you guys! Critiques and criticisms welcome!


End file.
